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300 deaths in US-led strikes in Raqqa: UN

Intensified coalition air strikes have killed at least 300 civilians in the Syrian northern city of Raqqa since March, as US-backed forces close in on the stronghold of Islamic State forces, UN war crimes investigators say.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a group of Kurdish and Arab militias supported by a US-led coalition, began to attack Raqqa a week ago to take it from the jihadists. The SDF, supported by heavy coalition air strikes, have taken territory to the west, east and north of the city.

Karen Abuzayd, an American commissioner on the independent panel, said on Wednesday: "We have documented the deaths caused by the coalition air strikes only and we have about 300 deaths, 200 in one place, in al-Mansoura, one village."

The UN investigators do not have access to Syria. They interview survivors and witnesses in neighbouring countries or by Skype with those still in Syria.

Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the UN Commission of Inquiry, speaking earlier to the UN Human Rights Council, said there had been a "staggering loss of civilian life" due to coalition air strikes that had forced 160,000 civilians to flee their homes.

Rival forces are racing to capture ground from Islamic State around Raqqa, and the Syrian army is also advancing on the desert area west of the city.

Separately, Human Rights Watch expressed concern in a statement about the use of incendiary white phosphorous weapons by the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, saying it endangered civilians when used in populated areas.

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In its speech to the 47-member forum in Geneva, the US delegation made no reference to Raqqa or the air strikes. US diplomat Jason Mack called the Syrian government "the primary perpetrator" of egregious human rights violations in the country.

Pinheiro said that if the international coalition's offensive is successful, it could liberate Raqqa's civilian population, including Yazidi women and girls, "whom the group has kept sexually enslaved for almost three years as part of an ongoing and unaddressed genocide".